One day they decide everyone should be mobile friendly, the next day they decide which sites are bad and which are not, what more?
Every single day, google is giving me more reason to use alternative search engines.
We do ask this. It's the entire reason we vote in representative democracies. It's absolutely nothing like the question you're replying to.
> In any society, we have some basic rules of 'good' and 'bad', and it's totally ok to test a website on those measures.
The basic rules of societies for what is 'good' and 'bad' about websites is something that you have entirely invented here in order to make an empty, unnecessarily dismissive argument.
Here's my answer: Google decides because our governments have abdicated responsibility for regulation or enforcement. Therefore, the responsibility is taken up by the groups in the best position to exploit it for money.
And you settle with a government which agrees to 'your' version of good and bad. But somehow, Google is not entitled to its opinion even if for trying to possibly make a safer internet.
> you have entirely invented here in order to make an empty, unnecessarily dismissive argument
On the contrary, I'd say you have invented your reasons for why Google is doing it (i.e., 'to exploit it for money') without any evidence. Of course, Google is here for profit, doesn't mean there's an evil motive for everything they do.
Of course, your judgement of good v/s bad is for good, and their judgement of good v/s bad is for bad. ;)
That's not how voting works. If the government agreed to my version of good or bad, the country would look a lot differently than it does.
> On the contrary, I'd say you have invented your reasons for why Google is doing it (i.e., 'to exploit it for money') without any evidence. Of course, Google is here for profit,
So you agree with me.
> doesn't mean there's an evil motive for everything they do.
No corporation has evil motives. I don't even know what that means. That it's trying to summon demons?
And I have no interest in explaining to you like 5 what is an evil corporation. Do a Google search.
In Chrome and firefox, if google decides your website isn't up to scratch for some random reason, then visitors will see a big scary red warning and be turned away.
Yes, in theory you could get people to use a browser that doesn't incorporate Google censorship, but that's becoming a big ask.
If your website does become blacklisted by Google, good luck finding out why. They won't tell you, and will instead make you click on a "request review" button a million times while you change things to see if it floats their boat.
Isn't it slightly worrying to have the entity who decides if websites are "safe" or not, also have a monopoly on online advertising? What's to stop them blacklisting sites that use competitors advertising? They could claim that it benefits the users some how, whilst squashing any hint of competition.
Google has become the absolute gatekeeper, and (To me at least) it's a very very sad state of affairs. The www used to be free and open.
There is naturally a tradeoff between the value of this information for avoiding dangerous sites, and the risk that Google might be abusing the power that goes with its role in publishing it. At the moment users are mostly deciding that the risk is worth it.
If Google becomes obviously abusive then users will have to re-assess that equation. But it's the users' decision to make; not ours.
Users aren't making a conscious decision. Browser vendors are making the decision for them. Most people don't change the default settings, especially something that claims to make your browsing "safer".
We're talking about Chrome, a browser that comes as the default setting on zero major operating systems.
https://security.googleblog.com/2015/12/protecting-hundreds-...
I wonder if newer versions of SamsungBrowser use it.
No we aren't. We are talking about the Google Safe Browsing service. They are different things. One is a web browser, the other is a blacklist that any software can use.
It's used by Firefox, Chrome and Safari. Together those make up a majority of browsers.
Not necessarily true, your website being flagged by Google can get you blocked on multiple browsers. That's enough to destroy your traffic. Granted, I'd say 99% of these are legit flags from JS injections, etc.
Sure, you could use a browser that doesn't do this...but, you won't.